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Melanin and Tkis

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Before being diagnosed last year, I was a normal brown dark skinned woman. After, starting Glivec, people are literally telling me that I look like a mixed person. There is a Cml'er who we become friends through our Doctor and when we saw each other today, we literally started laughing how different we both look. I seriously couldn't recognize her and it was the same case with her. I asked everyone that I know who has cml in the country(Rwanda), they all said that they dealt with it in their first 2 years. The thing is, there is no enough research on this matter on the internet and I would love to hear your opinions since my Doctor isn't giving me any sufficient facts about this.

"Hypopigmentation" - lightening of the skin is a known side effect of imatinib. Though it does not affect everyone, a lot of CML patients will report burning in the sun easier than before they started taking TKIs and the need to use stronger sunscreen. I guess that is a weaker version of skin actually becoming lighter. I know I burn easily, but given my Irish skin tone I'm not sure it's possible for my skin to be much lighter!

Some of the details in the links I've posted below hypothesize the reasons for this happening - an off-target effect of imatinb.